Witchcraft Among The Azande

The text ‘Witchcraft oracles, and magic among the Azande’ written by E.E. Evans-Pritchard in 1976, deeply explores the relationships and correlation within primitive society as well as the meanings primitive individuals give to rituals, as a means of understanding how different people in different societies in our world works and operates. Evans-Pritchard saw these relations as emerging from collective representations as a means of classifying and representing the world we live in. The term ‘Azande’ refers to a culturally diverse group of people, who have been brought and united together under the political and government organisations of a number of distinct kingdoms over the past two hundred years. E.E. Evans-Pritchard (1976, p.19) explains

It is something that is inherited, usually passed from father to son and mother to daughter. Azande believe that if the soul of the father is more powerful, the child being conceived will most likely be a boy; if the mother’s soul substance is greater, their child will therefore, be a girl. So, although every child is a product of both parents, each also has more of one particular gens and parent’s soul. And moreover, if that parent is a witch, inheriting this inherent power to do harm is inevitable. And so, Evan-Pritchard mentioned, because this property is organic, it grows as a person grows. Therefore an older witch is a more dangerous witch than a younger witch. Children in the Zande society, whose witchcraft substance is small, are never accused of major acts of harm such as murder. They can, however, have the power to cause minor misfortunes for other

Similar to religions in our society, witchcraft provides solace for the Azande people. For example, it provides them with a definite and clear reason to explain sorrowful events such as death or other misfortunes and other tragedy. This can be followed by the famous Marx quote: ‘religion is the opiate of the masse’. For the Azande society and culture, witchcraft helps dull the painful and sorrowful emotions following misfortunes and also serving as a control on the Azande people - it helps them to discipline them by providing them with a socially-accepted avenue to channel their negative thoughts and